I don’t mean to understate it, but, generally, I believe the Tea Party is the most misdirected, hypocritical, cynical, manipulative, Chicken Little, sour grapes, intellectually dishonest, political body I have ever encountered. In other words, they are the same as every other political party – including mine - when it is not in power. I am talking about the Party, not the people. The individual parts in American political life far exceed the sum of the whole. The people who make up the Tea Party, just like the people who make up the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, tend to be decent, hard working, patriotic, generous, neighborly, reverent folk. Politics make no difference to me and my neighbors when one of us can’t get the car up the icy driveway or the dogs get out. We all come running to help each other.
When I am not writing, blogging, preparing to re-enter the practice of law, trying to stay healthy and being Mister Mom, I live one of my passions by coaching swimming. No one ever thinks about it, but swim coaching is a paid profession, unlike some youth sports where coaching is a volunteer, though no less noble, position. As the head site coach for a year-round club team, the Dallas Mustangs, and as head coach for 12 summers of the KC Sharks Swim Team, I take great pleasure in the many hundreds and thousands of relationships I have had with swimmers and parents.
I don’t have or play favorites, every parent is a potential volunteer and advocate for the team. But, Rachel Segal is already in my parent hall of fame. She comes from a big, Irish Catholic family in Appleton, Wisconsin and has three, umm, spirited?, children. They are semi-wild kids but with a twinkle in their eye, sweet natured and you can hear them coming before you can see them. It is clear how much love, fun, laughter and chaos there is in the Segal house. Just like my house. Rachel is one of those parents who is always helpful to me as a coach, completely supportive, and never the stereotype pushy swim parent.
Rachel Segal, is a tea party member. “I used to be liberal. The morning after Alex (her first born) was born, I woke up and I was a Conservative. My sisters and one of my brothers are liberals - communists,” she says, as if the two are synonymous. She laughs her great laugh and I laugh, too. As Rachel tells it, “I’m Tea Party. I was there at the beginning of the Tea Party.” I believe it. My mind immediately pictures Rachel throwing boxes of tea into Boston harbor and yelling, “No taxation without Mel Gibson,” or whatever it is that those Tea Partiers yell. We have known each other several years but we rarely have time or inclination to talk about politics. However, we know where the other stands politically. Rachel clearly is comfortable, as her love for her communist siblings and her Catholic-Jewish marriage reveals, in a world where opposites can happily exist. This may explain her tolerance for the liberal swimming coach to whom she has entrusted her children.
So, one day, Rachel says to me, “Coach, I want to ask you something.” With some parents, who want to know if their child will make the Olympic team by the time they are 12, this is a time when I normally suddenly remember I have to check the pool pump. With Rachel, however, I know her question will be legit, usually something more along the line of, “Give Max a hard workout, ok? He’s been mouthy.” or “Why is Victoria just playing around?” She says all of this with a smile and a laugh. However, this time, she was serious and concerned and I took a step back when she asked, “Why don’t you put your hand over your heart when they play the National Anthem? Is it because, you know, your politics, you’re a liberal.” Then she laughed and I laughed. There was nothing disrespectful in her tone. For my own part, I have, in the past, noted about half the people place their hand over their heart in an over-wrought display of patriotism during the National Anthem. It was irritating to me that they did not know the proper protocol.
So I explained that in the Boy Scouts I had been taught that the Pledge of Allegiance required the hand over the heart while the Star Spangled Banner was not a pledge and did not require the hand over the heart. Though, in my defense, let me say that I always stand at attention and usually sing (as long as no one is within earshot). Rachel said she had been taught hand over the heart, for the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem. I agreed it had become a tradition, especially after 9/11, but I noted that at many of the swim meets we attend, perhaps half of the audience does not place the hand over the heart. I was pretty sure of myself. Rachel didn’t try to argue but she was unconvinced. After practice, it ate at me the whole way home. “I’ll show this tea partier. I was a Boy Scout.” I muttered to myself. I couldn’t wait to get to the computer.
The U.S. Flag Code, albeit seemingly out of date with its reference to a man’s “headdress” says that during the playing of the National Anthem, the right hand should be placed over the heart. Well, I thought, this must have become outdated at some point. My reference would be the Boy Scout Handbook (BSH), a book I cherished long after leaving scouting. I always thought the world would be a far better place if everyone could just follow the tenets of scouting:
The Motto: Be Prepared
The Slogan: Do a Good Turn Daily
The Oath: On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty, to God and my Country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong; mentally awake and morally straight.
The Scout Law: A Scout is, “Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.
Though I can still recite the above by memory, I sought out the 1967 version of the BSH to find out if I had somehow forgotten the National Anthem protocol. I found one on Amazon. It arrived as promised. This is a version with amazing illustrations, typical of good books of the early and middle part of the last century. The cover is adorned with white boy scouts camping and enjoying nature. The back cover, however, in a nod to the changing times, has a black and Asian Scout standing with some white scouts, enjoying the fellowship of scouting. There on page 67, in the section titled “Our Country’s Flag”, appear the words:
“Whenever you hear it played or sung, stand up, salute if you are in uniform, or place your right hand over your heart if you are in civilian clothes – and think of your own future under that Star Spangled Banner.”
How could I have missed this elemental rule of patriotism? How could so many Americans have missed it? I surely would have done it exactly to protocol had I known. My immediate and distant relations, and yours, who fought in wars in the name of freedom, deserve abiding respect.
I wrote Rachel Segal a thank you note and told her she was absolutely right about the proper etiquette for the National Anthem. I told her I would correct my manners in the future and assured her that my “liberal – communist” politics, as they might be seen to someone more conservative than I am, do not preclude a strong love for country, countrymen, flag, and anthem. As I have always said, I wish we were all just a bit more humble about the opinions we hold and consider the possibility that we could be wrong. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong as long as it is in the journey for truth. So, I learned something from my friend, Rachel Segal, and I appreciate her bringing it to my attention.
To all readers of this blog: I was Jeff's senior patrol leader and he was the worst boy scout I have ever seen. He lost his knife, my boots, even his tent---while he was camping in it. How do you go camping and lose your tent after you've already pitched it? He never obeyed rules or showed the slightest sign he was even aware of them. His uniform was always an adventure in incompleteness. Once when it was raining he tried to build a fire underneath a truck---under the gas tank. He spent a long time memorizing the Pledge of Allegiance---backwards. He was cheerful, inept and strangely detached. Some young scouts learn slowly, but this was different. When he was around, anything could happen at any time. To say he was weirdly dangerous hardly does justice to the situation.
ReplyDeleteIf he has a Boy Scout Handbook from 1967, it's because he lost his in the first 10 minutes and borrowed someone else's, never to return it.